With this belief connecting, collaborating, and constructing with others become authentic and natural performances, not techniques. I call these performances collaborative relationships and dialogical conversations, and although I address them separately below, they are intrinsically interrelated. The philosophical stance becomes an expression of a value, a belief, and a worldview that does not separate professional from personal. Before elaborating on the philosophical stance, I will briefly discuss collaborative relationship and dialogical conversation.
Collaborative Relationship and Dialogical Conversation
Collaborative relationship refers to the way in which we orient ourselves to be, act, and respond “with” another person so the other joins a therapeutic shared engagement and joint action that I call a shared inquiry (I discuss shared inquiry in the next section). Shotter (1984) suggests that all living beings exist in joint action--in the meeting and interacting with one another in mutually responsive ways. That is, we are relational beings who mutually influence and are mutually influenced by each other. As relational beings our “selves” cannot be separated from the relationship systems which we are, have been, and will be a part of. As well, though we are always speaking an ambiguous and different language than the other, as Bahktin (1981) suggests, our speaking and our language always includes others’ intentions and meanings.
Here I want to highlight “respond.” We are always responding: there is no such thing as a “no response” or “lack of response.” There is simply one kind of response which as with any response, the “receiver” interprets and decides whether this action is hearable or visible or not. Our responses to the other are critical to the development and quality of the relationship. They create the framework, the parameter, and the opportunity for the relationship. Collaborative Therapists value partnerships characterized by joint action or social activity in which each member develops a sense of participation, belonging, and co-ownership. With these come a sense of commitment and shared responsibility. The therapist is the catalyst for this partnership and its process. I am talking about the therapist’s response to the client, yet, of course, responding is an interactive two-way process.
Dialogical conversation refers to talk in which participants engage “with” each other (out loud) and “with” themselves (silently)—in words, signs, symbols, gestures, etc.—in a mutual or shared inquiry: jointly responding (i.e., commenting, examining, questioning, wondering, reflecting, nodding, gazing, etc.) as they talk about the issues at hand.
Drawing on Bakhtin’s (1984) definition, dialogue is a form of verbal interaction; it is communication between people that takes place in the form of an exchange of utterances. Dialogue, however, is not limited to spoken words; it also includes the silent way (inner talk and physical expressions) in which we talk with ourselves and others.
Dialogue involves a process of trying to understand the other person from their perspective not ours. Dialogical understanding is not a search for facts or details but an orientation. It is an (inter)active process not a passive one that requires participation through responding to connect and learn about the other from them, rather than to pre-know and understand them and their words from a theory. In relation to therapy, dialogue is invited through the process of the therapist’s learning about the other, especially about their uniqueness and noticing the not-yet-noticed. Through the process of trying to understand, local understandings develop from within the conversation. Dialogue is an always becoming, never-ending, and immeasurable process. As Bakhtin (1981) said, dialogue is the condition for the emergence of new meaning and other newness.
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